Midway on the road between Palmyra and Damascus – on the road that runs true through a desert landscape direct to Baghdad – is the Bagdad Cafe 66. Actually built and named after the movie of the same name, it is a most welcome stop for lunch, mint tea or just a change of view.
We stopped for lunch – a delicious offering of the usual mezzes and salads rounded off with a glass of fresh mint tea. The property of a most enterprising pair of multi-talented Syrian men with wide smiles, it is a quintessential example of pentimento; the long, bright central room of the cafe is hung with bad oil paintings, and dusty saddlebags, faded postcards and even a too-realistic spider hanging in a trick spider web. Carpets piled high act as cushions and banquette dividers; folding tin tables quickly snap open to hold the saucers of goodies. No other etiquette is needed here save for an open heart, a healthy contribution to the general conversation and a good appetite.
Before climbing back in to our van (which by this time looked like our living cum bedroom), Talib handed us the cafe’s business card. It might have been 48 degrees centigrade when we lunched at Bagdad Cafe but the card showed a different view of the landscape: Bagdad Cafe 66 in a desert covered in snow!